(non-native speaker)
Is there a reason why the English language has “special” words for a specific topic, like related to court (plaintiff, defendant, warrant, litigation), elections/voting (snap election, casting a ballot)?
And in other cases seems lazy, like firefighter, firetruck, homelessness (my favorite), mother-in-law, newspaper.
Most often the “fancier” words are loanwords from other language. Plaintiff/Defendant are from the French “pleintif/defendant”, litigation is from Latin. Firefighter, firetruck, and other compound words were created relatively recently compared to the others. Firefighters, firetrucks and newspapers mostly didn’t exist until after English mixed with other languages.
Also, the number of loanwords in English is completely absurd. Some other languages resisted borrowing/stealing special terminology from other languages by coming to with their own clever new words.
For example, entrepreneur is a clear loan from French where a salesman is a simple and clear description of a man who sells something. If you don’t know French, you’ll have no idea what the word entrepreneur means, but if you know basic English, salesman should be crystal clear to you.
Many other languages developed lots of these types of clear words in order to make communication easier and less elitist. English is completely wild and there’s no central authority that could reasonably give any recommendations that anyone would listen. This sorts of uncontrolled wild growth and stealing has been going on for centuries, and now we’ve ended up with a complete train wreck of a language.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Wait until you hear about the history behind how spelling and pronunciation became the disaster we have today.
A lot of them haven’t changed much in the last few centuries either. Law is a pretty arcane thing. I also suspect they don’t want most people to understand it too well. If the legal system is a confusing, overcomplicated, bureaucratic nightmare, then the lawyers will always have job security and charge stupidly high rates for their work.
All languages are the result of the collective brainfarts of lazy people. English is not special in this regard.
What you’re noticing is two different sources of new words: making at home and borrowing it from elsewhere.
For a Germanic language like English, “making at home” often involves two things:
- compounding - pick old word, add a new root, the meaning is combined. Like “firetruck” - a “truck” to deal with “fire”. You can do it recursively, and talk for example about the “firetruck tire” (the space is simply an orthographic convention). Or even the “firetruck tire rubber quality”.
- affixation - you get some old word and add another non-root morpheme. Like “home” → “homeless” (no home) → “homelessness” (the state of not having a home).
The other source of vocabulary would be borrowings. Those words aren’t analysable as the above because they’re typically borrowed as a single chunk (there are some exceptions though).
Now, answering your question on “why”: Norman conquest gave English a tendency to borrow words for “posh” concepts from Norman, then French. And in Europe in general there’s also a tendency to borrow posh words from Latin and Greek.
In general, specialized disciplines (like law, medicine, science, etc.) tend to also use specialized words. I don’t think English is unique in that regard, other languages do this as well.
Many of those words aren’t actually limited to those use cases, but they are used there because they have very specific meanings. A plaintiff, for example, is the person lodging a complaint. Doesn’t have to be a legal complaint, but in legal terms it makes it very clear who we’re talking about.
Others are just expressions. A snap election is just when you call an election earlier than the scheduled one. It’s essentially a nickname for something more complicated. Same goes with casting a ballot. It just means to toss your vote in for the count. It’s just the expression that stuck because it sounds fancier than just saying “voting.”
I think what you mean is compound words vs other words?
Wikipedia says there are lots of compound words in English.
Plaintiff is borrowed from Old French. Litigation from Latin…
I suppose it boils down to when and under what circumstances a term was needed to describe something. Sometimes there was a word from another language available. Or the whole subject came from a different culture. And sometimes they just described it with a compound of what it resembles. And how to make up terms probably also depends on what is en vogue at the time.
many legal terms come from latin. same with science, especially medical/biology. Basically philosophy (which law branches out of), medicine, and clergy were some of the first codified degree type of things.
I’ve never thought about it like that before! Thanks for giving me a new way to look at my native language lol
If everyone in a town has a house, could you say that town is homelessnessless?
could you say that town is homelessnessless?
Has. The word is legit, but it would be an adjective because of the last -less there, so:
- That town has homelessnessless.
- That homelessnessless town is nice.
You could convert it back into a noun, through zero derivation; for example “homeless” is an adjective too, but people can say “the homeless are hungry”, as if it was a noun. But it sounds weird in this situation, I don’t know why.
So, you are saying I should ask my representatives to focus more on achieving homelessnesslessness?
Can someone explain why a job application called “resume”, like in Play/Pause/Resume?
How is it relevant?
(I’m learning English as second language).
Edit: So we’re speaking French now? What? Why? You guys butchered so many words already, can you just made up one more?
Ps: Is that also the case with the word “fiancé”? I’ve been wondering where the hell did that “é” came from.
Because it’s actually supposed to be spelled résumé, being a word borrowed from the French
As part of a job application, it’s called a résumé (reh-zuh-may).
To continue playing something, it’s resume (ruh-zoom).
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The job application one should be pronounced with a long a as the second e. Despite the last e not being silent the u is still elongated. It’s a recent adoption from French. Even though they are spelled the same the two words are unrelated.
the u is still elongated
Eh? Resume is /ɹəˈʒuːm/ or /ɹəˈzjuːm/. Résumé is /ˈɹɛz.(j)ʉˌmeɪ/. That’s in my accent and other accents will vary in the precise vowels used. But because the accent is on the first syllable in résumé, the vowel becomes de-emphasised and, in many accents, more centralised. And that is, as far as I’m aware, nearly universal among English speakers.
This is fun
